Pigs at Davao Sur auction site positive for ASF, prompting tight checks

SULOP, DAVAO DEL SUR—The whole province’s hog industry has been placed under surveillance after the Department of Agriculture (DA) found confirmed cases of African Swine Fever (ASF) among pigs being traded at what used to be a bustling livestock auction here.

Agriculture Secretary William Dar said some pigs traded at the auction site had been found positive of the ASF virus. He clarified, though, that the pigs found positive of the virus came from nearby Davao

Occidental province and no case had been found in this province yet.

He said the pigs from the auction site were later traced to Calinan, Davao City and Koronadal, South Cotabato.

“(The infected pigs were) not necessarily (from) Davao del Sur bu (all hogs) are under surveillance in the province. The result of the samples taken from the auction market tested positive of the virus. (But those) pigs came from Davao Occidental,” Noel Provido, spokesperson of the DA regional office, said.

Officials here have suspended operations at the auction market, which had to be disinfected within the 30-day period before the auction site would be allowed to open again.

In the nearby town of Kiblawan, the local government has put up ASF quarantine checkpoints at all entrance and exit points to guard against the virus.

Mayor Carl Jason Rama placed the entire town on lockdown and banned the entry of all pigs and pork products from nearby towns.

“No pig can enter here without a certification to tell us where it came from,” he said. Rama said they needed to put up the quarantine checkpoints to stop the spread of the disease that could threaten the town’s 28,070 hog population.

In Magsaysay town, Mayor Arthur Davin directed the local police to set up checkpoints along the town’s boundary areas with Bansalan and Matanao towns of Davao del Sur.

“As a preventive measure against ASF outbreak, we have to secure all our hog livestocks here,” he said.

Edited by TSB